Overview of the key security issues facing the Alliance in preparation for the December 1984 meeting in Brussels. The document discusses the state of Alliance, conventional and nuclear weapons, and the installment of INF in Europe, focusing on the potential for continuing East-West dialogue around disarmament.

Italy's pemanent representative to NATO, Vincenzo Tornetta, reports to foreign minister Colombo about the prospects of NATO's 1980s defence strategy. He offers an overview of the developments of the Alliance, and discusses topical questions including euromissiles and anti-war movements in Europe, and calls for increased openness and willingness to negotiate with the East.

A memo to Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi from his Diplomatic Counselor Antonio Badini. Badini warns against the latest Soviet proposals. He suggests that agreeing to them without making any concessions regarding the deployment of American missiles would be tantamount to the realization of a long term goal of the Soviet Union, i.e. the decoupling between the Western European and the American defense system. […] He writes that the Soviet proposals “can be taken as a possible basis for an agreement is surprising. We can
only hope that this fact does not imply that, from a political and psychological standpoint, the process of Finlandization of Europe is far more advanced than we believed thus far.”